Death of a Rose
by silentsky93
Summary: Edward comes inches within death's doorstep after falling victim to a mysterious illness. But that's not possible for a vampire... is it?
1. Blood

**Disclaimer:** All _Twilght_ ideas, characters , names, settings, ect. are property of Stephanie Meyer. All orignal characters and ideas are the property of silentsky93.

* * *

The last thing she remembered was his smile.

They had been talking about something idyllic, next to his locker in the hallways of the school. Something carefree. The weather. A lighthearted joke. Each other.

Edward had been smiling.

But in the breath of a second, Bella couldn't remember what it had been for.

Because he fell.

Right beside to Bella.

Perhaps it would have been better if he had died instantly.

Because the scariest thing wasn't watching the fall.

It was watching the pain.

Edward sank to his knees, eyes clamped shut in a scream. His pale hands trembled violently, clasping over his chest.

Violent coughs racked his body, slowly bringing him down completely to the floor.

"_Edward!_" Bella screamed.

She seized him by the shoulders.

His eyelids fluttered, his gaze distant as he looked up to her.

Then, with a feeble, shuddering rise, he pulled himself up – just a little bit – and plunged his fangs deep into her neck.

"_Edward?!_" Bella cried.

He pulled in closer, drinking greedily.

Panic leapt at her throat.

She shoved him away.

Edward collapsed back to the floor.

His eyes didn't open.

Bella spun as the school principal, Mrs. Eisenach, charged down the hallway, her face in a state of controlled panic as she shouted into her two-way radio.

"Keep all the students in their classrooms until further notice," she commanded, "Code blue. I've got a student unconscious, looks like he's coughed up some blood. Get an ambulance over, now!"

Bella slumped to the floor, her shoulders trembling as she tried to bite back the tears.

"Sweetie, what happened?" the principal asked, placing a hand gently on Bella shoulder "Are you okay?"

She tried to speak, but no sound came out of her mouth.

Edward was an immortal. He couldn't die. He couldn't get sick. Not like this.

Yet there he lay, unconscious, beside her.

He wasn't moving.

Carlisle rushed in, with several EMT's rushing in a gurney behind him.

The doctor had become a master of crafting lies of identity over his many centuries of life, making his mask of an ordinary living virtually unbreakable.

But even Carlisle couldn't mask the genuine horror in his face, frozen deep into his eyes as he raced down the corridor.

"_Mrs. Eisenach, what happened to my son?_" Carlisle cried.

"I – "

"Bella?"

Bella sobbed, shaking her head in tears.

"_I don't know, I don't know,_" she cried, "He just fell. And… oh my God, I think he's dead. Dear god, please, he _can't_ die, he _can't_ be dead!"

"He's not, Bella," Carlisle said grimly, loading Edward onto a gurney, "Not yet. This condition, though, is… unusual, especially for him."

Bella stifled a sob. His grim tone clearly defined "unusual" as "impossible".

Carlisle gestured to the EMT's, who rushed Edward away through the doors of the school.

Bella ran after them.

Mrs. Eisenach restrained her.

"No! _Edward!_" Bella screamed, "Let go of me! I'm going with him! _I'm going with him!_"

"Stay back!" Carlisle shouted.

"_NO!_"

The doors clanged shut.

The last thing Bella saw was the blood on Edward's mouth.

And the blood on her neck…

She pressed a hand against it.

Why did she feel no pain there?


	2. Alchemist

12-year-old Sydonius was the oldest living scholar in the history of mankind.

He had studied alchemy for at least a millennium.

Sitting in his cellar study in Venice, Italy, he squinted as a beam of sunlight flooded from the streets above and onto his paperwork.

He stepped forward to gather it, flipping through the pages as his pale skin glistened under the light.

The door behind him opened. A set of heavy, human footsteps shuffled in.

Sydonius ignored it, drawing back his overly-long, black mane with a hair tie. He was a practical child – everything had a purpose. And the last thing he needed was hair to distract him from his work.

"Ah, Bernardo," he said, not looking up, "Good day. What brings you here?"

The old man behind standing in the doorway sighed. While perfectly human, Bernardo was wise in the ways of vampires, having taken in the boy himself. Sydonius, grudgingly, had agreed. He needed a place to study in privacy.

"You spoke with Cullen?" Bernardo asked.

"Which one?" Sydonius asked coolly.

"Don't play games with me, boy!" the old man growled, "You know very well which one."

Sydonius didn't even blink, much less look up. With the slightest hint of a smile, he stood up, set the paper's aside, and moved back to his workstation with his hands in his pockets.

"I may be weaker than Edward in physical strength," he said, "But my strength of mind surpasses his by far. I've seen him. He acts on instinct, not reason. Emotion, not logic. In the end, Cullen is still but a child."

"So? Did you give it to him?"

"Yes," Sydonius said, his voice still perpetually calm, "It is only a matter of time now."

The old man ran a hand though his thinning hair.

"So you played him like a harp?" Bernardo sighed.

"Hardly," Sydonius said easily, lifting a flask from the table, "I tried to warn him. But he simply cannot understand. He was willing to pay anything, give anything, for what I could give him."

"Sydonius, what have you done?"

"I've saved us," he answered simply, "Cullen was a threat, Bernardo. And, I hardly think you would like to have the Volturi involved in these matters, no?"

Bernardo's head dropped.

"Dear God, boy," he sighed, "I just hope you know what you're doing."

"I do," he replied coolly, "It is Cullen who is blind. Every choice in this world comes with a repercussion. An unwritten price, one that cannot come in numbers. It is the sacrifice of a piece of life. The sacrifice of oneself. I only wish that Cullen never chose as he did."

Sydonius held up the flask again, squinting as he swirled a wine-red liquid in the light of the sun.

"Very well, then," Bernardo sighed, "If you need me, I'll be tending the garden."

"Of course," Sydonius said, "Arrivederci."

As the door shut, the boy put his work aside and turned to the darkness.

He grasped his hand around the knife that rested near his flask.

With a casual flick of his hand, he tossed the blade across the room.

He watched it cleanly slice away the head of a bottled rose, sending a flurry of crimson petals spiraling to the ground.


	3. Missing

Bella remembered the sound.

The sound of the metal sign, swinging back and forth in the dead of night, with beads of fresh rain splattered across its bold, ebullient lettering.

Back…and forth…

_Creak… creeeak…_

She could hear it from inside the Cullen house.

The house was empty.

Dead.

Edward – as well as the rest of the family – was nowhere to be found.

No signs of life remained now, no wear on the carpet where the furniture used to be, no imprints where photographs had once hung from walls.

In the mere turn of a day, their home had become an empty shell of timber, insulation, and steel.

The Cullen family was no more.

It was as if they never had been.

Bella reached for her cell phone – clutching it tightly in her hands with a sigh. She had called everyone. Her father. The hospital. The school. A phone directory. She even phoned the group of local realtors who had staked that metal "For Sale" sign at the front of the Cullen house driveway; they claimed the house had never been owned before. Everyone she called had searched across years of records, looking for the name "Cullen", and all of them, telling her in the end:

"I'm sorry. I think you've made a mistake."

The phone slid from her palms. It fell to the floor with a _thud_.

There was a mistake. But she didn't make it.

Something was wrong. Very wrong.

Bella would find what it was.

She would find Edward.

_He was not going to die._

She burst outside, slamming the door behind her as she hurtled across the ground, springing inside her truck.

After starting it and veering out of the driveway, the usual business of watching for danger fell completely from her mind. Bella slammed her foot into the accelerator, flying down the road at speeds previously unthinkable for any 56-year-old truck.

She didn't know where she was going, or how she was going to find Edward – only that she would. Ice-spiked adrenaline pumped hard and fast through her veins, thoughts racing through her head so fast that it was impossible to grasp hold of even one.

Somehow, her manically panicked mind fixated on Seattle. She was ignoring the fact that it was at least four hours away. Ignoring that the worn tires skidded and swerved every time she swung around a rain-slickened bend.

Ignoring that she could, very humanly, die.

She was going faster, faster, faster...

It was all too fast that the dark figure of a person came flying up in the path of her headlights.

She threw the wheel to the side.

The truck soared from the road, a flying steel death trap as it hurtled towards the trees at 95-miles-per-hour.

Yet, for Bella, time seemed to slow to a sickening, frame-by-frame pace. She looked to see the shadowy figure watching her from the roadside - waiting all too patiently for her to die.


	4. Darkness

"Wake up."

"Unnn..."

The cold touch of a hand brushed across her face.

"You must wake up... Bella."

Her eyes flickered, staring up at a set of topaz ones.

She sprang up with a gasp.

But the eyes she was seeing did not belong to Edward.

The belonged to a scrawny, pasty-looking boy with long, black hair. He was clad simply in a loose black hoodie and worn jeans, regarding her coolly from where he sat.

"Who..." Bella murmured.

She remembered the silhouetted figure, waiting at the roadside, watching her crash.

"Sydonius," he answered curtly, "And, you must forgive me, Miss Swan – but, you were about to kill yourself. I had no choice but to calculate a safe trajectory path and bring your vehicle into a controlled crash at the roadside."

"_Crash?!_" Bella exclaimed, "What the hell were you thinking, I -"

"Could've have been killed?" Sydonis said, losing his unperturbed expression to one of arrogant confidence, "Please. You insult my intelligence. My sciences are never wrong. I'm sure you recognize what I am, Miss Swan. In which case, I request that you show a little respect; after all, I'm older than half the dirt in your backyard."

_A vampire, _she thought, wordlessly.

Bella glanced around, finding themselves in a bus the clattered down the streets of downtown Seattle. It was deep night, with towers of lights moving past them with each passing block.

"Of course," Sydonius explained, "You suffered a few minor bruises and cuts, and you passed out from the shock of your incident, nothing more. No signs of hematoma, fractures, or any other serious injury. Furthermore, and the situation at home is quite under control. There's a temporary computer crash at your father's station -"

"Kid," Bella snapped, "Look... I really. Do not. Care. Understand? I don't give _a damn _about anything that's been spouting from your mouth this far. I just want to find Edward. And... you know something about what's happened. Something you haven't even said."

Bella tensed. Her bluff was a stab in the dark with a paper dagger. Even so...

He gave a glance outside the window, before pulling on one of the bus handles that signaled for a stop.

"Come with me," he said coolly.

Sydonius stepped off first, with Bella following behind. They walked the dank Seattle streets, with the boy keeping his own sweet distance from Bella.

"Remember when I said... my sciences were perfect?"

"Yeah," she replied, "What are you getting at?"

He paused.

"That I have lied" he admitted solemnly, "That I have made a mistake. Science never has all the answers, anymore than anyone or anything else in this world. I still remember when alchemy was a fool's art, with idiots of men trying to transform lead into gold. An impractical and near impossible feat today, a completely illogical fallacy then. And so, that is where I got my beginnings, creating chemical elixirs for those just like me. For instance: I gave one the ability to walk beneath the sun without repercussion. I gave myself the ability to consume human foods as I please. But understand this, Miss – for every success, there is a failure. For every person I've helped, I have killed another in trying. And for every innocent person... "

He lead Bella into an empty carpool lot, illuminated only by the green-tinged flickering of a florescent light.

Fear encroached upon Bella's heat. Not so much out of fear of the night, or fear of what may come from the darkness... but, more so, a lurking intuition that something was terribly wrong.

"For every innocent person," the boy continued, "There is one who is conceited and selfish, ready to cut away at lives like predator to prey."

A figure stepped out of the darkness from behind Bella. He was a skeletal, greasy, young man, with an acne scarred face that appeared to have been burned somehow in addition.

Sydonius never moved.

The young man seized Bella, yanking her close against his bony body before she could fight, before she could scream.

"Miss Swan," Sydonius sighed, turning to face her.

The man held his hands across Bella's eyes.

Sydonius spoke again.

_"I killed your Edward Cullen."_


	5. Rose

"I killed your Edward Cullen," Sydonius muttered, "And I replaced the one you once knew with_ that_."

The skeleton of a young man held Bella closer still.

"Bella," he rasped, his voice alight in feverish, manic delight, "Don't you remember, Bella? It's me, Edward. It's always been!"

She shuddered as the ruined face drew nearer, his rank breath clawing it's way across her.

She pushed him away.

He stumbled back.

"NO!" Bella cried, "_You are not Edward Cullen!_"

"Alas, he is," the Sydonius said, " made a deal with me in exchange for his mortality. I refused initially, but, ultimately, I was left with no choice. I am the only one known on the face of this earth who posses the knowledge of how to make human those who seek it. Mr. Cullen threatened to take my own life, had I not agreed to do his bidding. I feared this, even though I have no need for such a lengthy life. As soon as he offered his price in gold, I indulged, and I accepted. I procured the vile substance that would end his life as a vampire. I gave it to him; and you, Bella, saw the beginnings of it's effect."

"What are you saying? You mean -"

"When he fell ill? Yes. When his bite failed to affect you? Yes. The process of losing immortality is painful; it is fortunate you only saw it's beginnings."

"It doesn't matter though, Bella," Edward wheezed, "Don't you see? Isn't it beautiful? We can be together forever. We will live together. Die together. Nothing can keep us apart anymore... I'm just like you, Bella!_ I'm human!_"

He grasped her hand in his - a hand that was warm and sweaty, repulsive to the touch.

Bella looked up into his face with horror.

The face, the features... beyond the hideous, acne ridden, and scarred face, it was still essentially the same person.

But the Edward that Bella knew was beautiful.

The Edward in front of her was a monster.

A true monster.

"Change him back!" Bella demanded to Sydonius, "Didn't you hear me? Change him back!"

"But, Bella-" Edward pleaded.

"I can do nothing," Sydonius admitted, "Even if I had not contracted my service to Mr. Cullen, it simply cannot be done. His body is unfathomably weak after the change... it will be awhile before he can even match your strength, Bella. Should he even touch the blood or venom of a vampire within his lifetime, he will die."

"It's okay, Bella," Edward whispered, "It'll be fine... there's no need to be afraid. The other Cullens disowned me when that learned of my contract with Sydonius, but none of it matters! You are... the most important thing to me._ I will never let you go."_

Bella's nostril's flared as she shoved him again.

This time, he stumbled and fell to the ground, his face and eyes shattered in incomprehension as he gazed into her face.

"Bella..."

"Don't. Dare. Touch. Me." she snapped. "I'm leaving. To Forks. You will not come with me."

"_Bella!"_

"This is goodbye... Edward."

In the days before, there had been no flaws. But in the end, a lie of happiness built so much on face value could never make itself so painfully apparent.

Edward rose, only to sink again to his knees as Bella faded into darkness.

By this time, Sydonius acknowledged his own failure in what he had done.

With that, he too left the empty lot and vanished into the city night.

Edward made one last call out to Bella.

_"I love you!" _

Then, grief took hold, and anguished sobs drowned out anything left he had to give.

* * *

There was a new kid who arrived at Forks High School that next week who was immediately the center of gossip. He was unspeakably ugly; it wasn't long before the students began to question if he was some hideous crossbreed between a confused warthog and an equally confused wilderbeast. Bella, upon seeing this student enter the school, immediately did all needed to drop any classes she happened to share with him. They said he stank, too... did he have a fetish for being near rotting bodies, or did it happen to be that disgusting skin condition?

It was a drizzling, gray day afternoon that he approached her after school.

"Bella..." Edward murmured, "I know you don't want to be with me. But... even so... it can't change how I love you."

Silence.

"Bella? Please..."

She just shook her head.

"I'm afraid," she said, "It simply was not meant to be."

She gathered her things and left.

It was painful to bear. But, regardless, there was nothing more to be done for the defeated mortal youth.

He could only watch her walk away as he stood beside a withering hedge of dead roses.

* * *

**A/N:** Fanfiction inspiration from William Carlos William's poem "The Act." Thank you for reading!


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